History of English Literature
Lecture VII -17th November
The age of transition: The Norman Conquest
English chivalric literature and Arthurian Romances.
Part Two
Romanasque=Norman
4. England under the Plantagenet kings  feudalism and prosperity
a. Court of Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine  centre of chivalric and courtly culture.
b. later Plantagenet kings  a crusading image of Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) // baronial
rebellions under John Lackland (1199-1216, Magna Charta granting rights to nobility) and Henry
III (1216-1272, the rebellion of Simon de Montfort and first English parliaments)// effective rule of
Edward I (1272-1307, conquest of Wales and attempts to conquer Scotland).
c. English prosperity  wool exports.
5. Chivalric romances and the so-called Gesta (chanson de geste  songs about deeds): three main
cycles of romances (matiers, matters)
a. the matter of Rome (antiquity, Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar),
b. the matter of Britain (King Arthur, Grail, Knights of the Round Table),
c. the matter of France (Charles the Great, i.e. Charlemagne, Roland, ).
romaunt  romances
6. The feudal culture and the culture of chivalry in literature. The beginnings of the so-called
Middle English Literature
a. Chivalric culture and crusades  the idea of a holy war and the image of Christ as a perfect
knight.
b. The Arthurian myth  in search of a chivalric and monarchic ideal  mythicization of reality-
history turned into legend (e.g. the myth of Arthur; later romances of Henry II's son, Richard the
Lionheart contrasted with his incompetent brother John Lackland):
-re-birth of the myths of origin  the story of Brutus, the grandson of Aeneas of Troy. Aenaes 
legendary founder of Rome, Brutus  of Britain (the popular, though untrue, origin of the name)
-the kingdom of England as  a second Troy, later  second Rome.
7. Arthurian literature in English and the continent (12th c.):
a. Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Historia Regum Britanniae (1138)  see above (4b)
b. Wace, an Anglo-Norman poet, and his Roman de Brut (Story of Brut) of ca. 1154- see above (4b)
c. Elsewhere in late 12th c. Europe
-France Chretien de Troyes's romances with Arthurian knights as central characters (Lancelot,
Perceval and the quest for the Holy Grail, Yvain, Galahad);
-France: Robert de Boron's poem about Joseph of Arimathea (the Grail Legend) and Merlin
-Germany: Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (the story of the Grail).
d. England: Layamon's Brut (Late 12th/ early 13th c.) - English colonizatin of the myth of Arthur in
the times of weak monarchy (King John Lackland).
-Old English (Anglo-Saxon) traces in early Middle English literature - alliteration